You are according way too much power and importance to race, especially in a 2019 America that, while not totally post-racial, is largely not post-racial only because “race” and racism aren’t being allowed to die a natural death and are, instead, being desperately kept alive by those like you who are focusing on illusory “racism,” “whiteness” and “white supremacy” at a time when such concepts are increasingly losing any real-world meaning they may once have had.
Your attempts to dismiss the far greater cultural salience of intelligence and beauty are unconvincing. What you say is that “these haven’t been leveraged by taking wholly subjective and immutable traits, creating dominance where there is only difference, and then systematically creating a worldwide system based on that dominance.”
With regard to beauty, you say that “this is a cultural marker that, generally speaking, is held accountable to white supremacy.” I have no idea (and, likely, nor do you) what beauty being “held accountable to white supremacy” even means, but if what you’re trying to say is that whiteness is seen as beautiful throughout the world, and therefore, whiteness rather than beauty is the more salient factor, I’d suggest that belief is crazy. The number of studies showing massive advantages to being attractive (and having nothing to do with whiteness) is legion. Here’s just a brief article from Business Insider giving you some sense:
I’ll quote the first few paragraphs:
Contrary to popular belief, men and women generally agree on who is and who is not physically attractive, even across different cultures.
What makes someone enjoyable to look at?
High cheekbones, fuller lips, big eyes, and a thin chin are associated with sexiness in women, whereas a big jaw and broad chin are preferred in men. Smooth skin, shiny hair, and facial symmetry are also key aspects of beauty.
Nothing about whiteness there, is there? And you can look through the rest of the article yourself to see some of the advantages of being seen as beautiful, such as, obviously, better luck finding mates, but also, less obviously, being seen as more likable, more trustworthy, healthier, smarter and also generating more sales and being more successful in politics.
The overwhelming power of beauty, a largely immutable quality, on us is a worldwide phenomenon, prevalent in every single society and culture. Believing that race in 21st century America wields more power than beauty is purely delusional.
As for intelligence, unlike beauty, this is a characteristic you can work to change through education to some extent, though there’s also, obviously, a degree to which people are born with greater and lesser abilities and, still more importantly, born into environments that predestine them to maximize or minimize their innate abilities. Once dealt their lot early in life, intelligence becomes a pervasive factor determining their fates. Although people can overcome low intelligence and enjoy significant “success” in life — ironically, being beautiful is the main way I know to do that — the likelihood of overcoming low intelligence is extremely low. I won’t burden you with all the research showing the clear correlation between measures of intelligence and all kinds of life outcomes because I’m sure we both know what they’ll show.
Taking these two factors together, smart and beautiful people rule the world. White people don’t rule the world. They rule in majority white countries, just as Asian leaders rule in majority Asian countries (representing a far greater percentage of the world’s population, of course), Hispanic leaders rule in majority Hispanic countries and black leaders rule in majority black countries. But the vast majority of white people, just like the vast majority of people of every race, live a day-to-day subsistence lifestyle, with an average income of just over $30,000 even in an “advanced” country like the U.S. Yeah, the average black income in the U.S. is even lower, while the average Asian income is actually higher, but at this point, when we’re talking about people living near the poverty line, does it really matter who’s first or second in that line? Moreover, even speaking in terms of racial differences, meaningful differences exist within those deemed black. Nigerian Americans, for instance, have a significantly higher average income in the U.S. than white Americans. Meanwhile, the highest average income in the U.S. belongs to Indian Americans, a group that is nearly as dark as or darker than many African-Americans in skin pigment, and yet that doesn’t seem to be stopping them from comparatively high achievement.
So “race” is just a massive simplification of the overall picture. It’s just not an important factor compared to many others. If you want to focus on something real that we can actually measure and work to change, focus on poverty. It’s not as sexy as race because it afflicts everyone, but I, for one, am very confident that if we all take steps we can to address the problem of poverty, racial differences and the race issue will eventually get dissolved all on their own.
